Ark moved when?

2 Samuel 5,6— “Did David bring the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem after defeating the Philistines (2 Samuel 5,6), or before (1 Chronicles chapters 13 and 14)?”

This is not really a problem, for if we continue reading on further to 1 Chronicles 15, we find that David brought the Ark after defeating the Philistines. The reason for this is that the Israelites moved the Ark of the Covenant twice. The first time, they moved it from Baalah, prior to the defeat of the Philistines, as we see in 2 Samuel 5 and 6 and in 1 Chronicles 15. Once the prophet Samuel narrates David’s victory over the Philistines, he tells us about both times when the Ark was moved. However in 1 Chronicles, the order is as follows: the Ark was first moved from Baalah; then David defeated the Philistines; and finally, the Ark was moved from the House of Obed-Edom.

Therefore the two accounts are not contradictory at all. What we have here is simply one passage giving us the complete history of the Ark at once (rather than referring to it later) and another presenting the history in a different way. In both cases the timing of events is the same.

An even more confusing chronology can be found in the Qur’ān — In Sura Baqara we are introduced to the fall of Adam, then God’s mercy is shown to the Israelites, followed by Pharaoh’s drowning, followed by Moses and the Golden calf, followed by the Israelites’ complaint about food and water, and then we are introduced to the account of the golden calf again. Following this, we read about Moses and Jesus, then we read about Moses and the golden calf, and then about Solomon and Abraham.